Daisy Chains
by MoonBlue22
Summary: There used to be three of them. The Evans girls, the neighbours had called them. Petunia was the eldest; too old to be a competitor, and too different from Lily to be anything other than a staunch ally. Lily had been born two years before her. Daisy wondered sometimes if there had been nothing left for her. Lily had somehow taken it all.
1. Chapter 1

**Daisy Chains**

Chapter I

**The Evans Girls**

* * *

><p><em>It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. <em>– **Arya Stark, Game of Thrones**

* * *

><p>There used to be three of them. <em>The<em> _Evans girls, _the neighbours had called them.

They had been born on the right side of the river; went to the _good _school and not the _other _one; had a respectable white-collar father and a house-proud, house-wife mother; they had walked to school on sunny days, crisp white blouses and starch grey skirts; they had got stopped in the street by old biddies and family friends – _how is your father? How is your mother? School working you hard eh?_

They had been _those _sort of girls.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Tall Petunia and lovely Lily; both of them had been as pretty and proper as the flowers they had been named for.

Petunia was the eldest, and therefore had been the idol of her childhood; too old to be a competitor, and too different from Lily to be anything other than a staunch ally. It was Tuney she had ran too, with scraped knees, when Kevin Small had thrown paint over her hair, when Lily had teased her about something or another.

Lily had been born two years before her. Daisy wondered sometimes if there had been nothing left for her, because Lily had somehow taken it all.

Lovely Lily; Lily who could cheek their father and get away with it; Lily who made the teachers laugh, no matter how much she spoke back; Lily who everyone remembered for her hair; who could count better than Tuney; who could run faster than Daisy, and who had punched Kevin Small, only to go and make friends with him the next day.

Both her sister's had been named for flowers.

Daisy had been named for a weed.

**OoOoOoOoO**

_"It's not right," said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower's flight to the ground and lingered upon it. "How do you do it?" she added, and there was definite longing in her voice. - _**Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.**

**OoOoOoOoOoO**

At eight years old, Daisy's greatest accomplishment is that she can turn a cartwheel. She spends that summer turning them on the springy grass of Bounderby Park, with Tuney and Lily as her captive audience.

Lily tries to copy her, attempts to mimic the movement of arms and kick of her chicken-legs, while Tuney threads daisies together with her slim fingers, until she wears a crown of pale petals.

Then everything changes with the appearance of the Snape boy. Daisy has seen him before, shadowing his mousy mother around the shops like a bedraggled dog. Mrs Evans had pointed them out once, whispering in a hushed voice, equal parts pity and scorn.

The boy whispers now, greasy haired with a gaunt, feverish face. Of witches. Of wizards.

Tuney is quick to point out that he's from Spinner's End, and a bad sort. Tuney would know these things; she's twelve and in Middle School, and to Daisy, on the threshold of a conspiracy only adults are a part of.

Yet Daisy, who still believes that a ring of toadstools hides a fairy den, and receives a handwritten letter from Santa every year, is positively bouncing at the idea of magic, and sorcery, and so finds everything he says intensely delighting.

Until it strikes her that he's not looking at her when he says it.

He's looking at Lily.

**OoOoOoOoO**

The Snape boy – or Sev, as Lily now calls him –enters into their lives like an unexpected sneeze, carrying with him a horde of contagious germs and diseases.

At first their mother is wary of Lily's new friend, treating him the same way one might treat a malnourished, but parasitical cat. She is kind to him, she smiles at him, sometimes even feeds him biscuits and asks Lily - very innocently of course – if Severus is getting on well at home.

Petunia grows to hate him almost as much as Lily grows to love him and so Daisy hovers in between, unable to boast the spiteful resentment of Tuney, but incapable of being as fond of him as Lily.

She follows them sometimes, listens to their chatter, and joins in their games. She is never treated with as much contempt as Tuney (because she is the _little _sister after all, and there come some perks to being _little _Daisy, as Kevin Small was quick to learn) but she feels like an intruder, a spy, and there is a bitter taste in her mouth when Lily tosses her hair and says, _'Sev told me…'_

Tuney is sympathetic, and when Lily starts to push her further away, Tuney welcomes her with open arms. _'He's filthy,' _she snipes, _'look at him.'_

Daisy cannot help but nod and agree, feeling very grown up as Tuney smiles at her approvingly, threading flowers into her hair.

**OoOoOoOoO**

When the letter comes, accompanied by a stern-looking woman, dressed in a tweed coat, it is as though a dormant volcano has suddenly and inexplicably decided to erupt.

There is a sort of dread that comes with watching her parents stumble and wobble; her father's voice trembles with the sort of caustic rage reserved for politicians and the news, and when he starts shouting at the woman, her Mother sends them all up to their rooms.

The three of them crouch next to the upstairs railings trying to catch snatches of what is being said.

It isn't difficult, her father has a powerful, booming voice, and her mother's protests are shrill, and desperate, _'be quiet Jim! Mrs Partridge will hear you!' _

But when it grows quieter and quieter, Daisy becomes more and more uncertain, squeezing Tuney's hand and becoming engrossed with picking bits of fluff out of the tangerine carpet.

"This is all your fault," she hears Tuney gripe at Lily.

Lily says nothing, her silence condemning her.

**OoOoOoOoO**

More letters come after that, all of them from Lily. They arrive in flurries twice a week, accompanied by an enormous bird which terrifies Tuney.

Their mother, who is equally as nervous of the owl, pours the orange juice and speaks in the same bright, cheery voice she usually reserves for Mrs Partridge and their Grandmother. _"Oh look, a letter from Lily. Isn't that lovely?"_

It almost becomes normal, to find a bird of prey at the breakfast table. Soon in becomes another domestic oddity, like the way her Dad likes to have marmalade in his porridge, or how her mother slurps hot chocolate from a spoon, in a most unladylike fashion.

Lily's name is mentioned more and more, as though their mother is terrified they might forget they have a sister.

Cakes are baked, parcels of scones and millionaire shortbread, all for their Dad to apprehensively attach to the owl while their mother frets over how long it might take to reach Lily and the hygienic ramifications of postal birds.

**OoOoOoOoO**

When Lily does eventually return to them, three months later in December, her presence is both welcoming and disorientating.

The build up to her homecoming is fraught with impatience and tension; all the linen is washed, and all of Lily's favourite meals are cooked.

Tunney is not allowed to go out with Wendy McGowan that night and Daisy has to spend an afternoon polishing Lily's bedroom while her mother scrubs the bathroom until her fingers are dried up like prunes and the whole upstairs landing reeks like a hospital ward.

The three weeks revolve around her sister, as though every day is Lily's birthday, and they must all do their best to make it as wonderful as possible.

They take her to the cinema, out for dinner, and into Nottingham for Christmas shopping. When their Grandmother comes to visit, she coos and fusses, praising her clever granddaughter and congratulating her repeatedly for her acceptance into a private school

Lily speaks to Daisy of Hogwarts, of Gryffindor and Charms, of her new friends, of her teachers. There is a look in her eyes too; a sort of sparkle, an ember of longing.

"You'd rather be there, then here," Daisy accuses. It's Boxing Day and their watching _'It's a Wonderful Life' _though Lily has her nose buried in a Potions book.

"Don't be such a baby," Lily snaps back, without looking up.

**OoOoOoOoO**

It's natural, what with Lily hardly being there anymore, that Daisy should grow closer to Tuney. Tuney teaches her how to paint her nails and whispers to her about boys, about girls, and shows her off to her friends.

When Alfie Adams asks Tuney to the school dance, it's Daisy who sits on Tuney's bed as she gets ready, fussing and panicking over dresses, and make-up and jewellery.

Tuney is fourteen and part of a world filled with rituals concerning boys and fashion. Daisy is ten and as much as she feels privileged to be privy to such a mature and alluring realm, she cannot comprehend the excitement over Alfie Adams, with his pimples and his squeaking voice.

His older brother Brian, with his guitar playing and motorbike riding is far _cooler. _

_**OoOoOoOoO**_

For her eleventh birthday they all go into Nottingham and visit the zoo.

It's the first time Daisy has ever seen an elephant and she spends all day taking pictures with the Kodak camera Granny Flo gave her as a present. Lily sends her a ring in the post; a real mood ring, she elaborates in her letter, not a stupid muggle one like the one she'd won at the Fair, four years ago.

When they go home, it's waiting for them, lying innocently on the Welcome mat.

Daisy tries to swallow the burst of ecstatic excitement bubbling in her chest, when she catches Tuney's eye and feels the disappointment, the anger, and the bitterness radiating from her like a January chill.

She's just like Lily now.

* * *

><p><strong>Basically this is the lovechild of procrastination and a random idea floating around in my brain. This will be three chapters long. Feel free to goggle at it and let me know what you think :)<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

**Daisy Chains**

Chapter II

**Fractures**

* * *

><p><em>Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. - <em>**Louise Glick.**

There used to be two of them. _The Evans sisters_, the girls at school had called them.

There was another, the red-haired girl, the middle sister, but she went to boarding school in Scotland and nobody spoke about her. They were the sort of sisters who linked arms in the street, who waited for each other outside the school gates, who attended Miss Owen's after school ballet classes together and who giggled over gossip columns and followed handsome boys.

They had been _those_ sort of sisters.

**OoOoOoOoO**

"I don't want to go," she tells Lily that spring. It's the three of them at Bounderby Park again, but this time Tuney isn't there, having left to shopping with Yvonne Jones.

This time it's Daisy who plucks pale petals from the heads of her namesake, and tosses them into the air, watching them scatter in the breeze. Lily is there, and wherever Lily lingers, Severus is not far behind, like an oily haired Labrador.

"It's because of her, isn't it?" sighs Lily impatiently, as though Daisy is trying to argue the merit of keeping a stray pigeon as a pet. "Don't be ridiculous Daisy, and don't listen to a word _she_ says. She's just jealous, isn't she Sev?"

Severus, who spends most of the afternoon with his hook-nose buried in a textbook, looks up at Lily, and nods affirmatively. _He does look like a scarecrow, _Daisy thinks, knowing Tuney would find the comparison suitably venomous. But Tunney isn't there, and Lily's words, though treasonous in their way, confuse some vital, internal, cog in the mechanics of her mind.

"You'll love Hogwarts," encourages Lily, brightly, suddenly taking an astonishing interest in her little sister. "Won't she Sev? Just wait until you see it, Dais, just wait until you get a wand."

Daisy nods, unearthing more dirt with her fingers, and closes her ears against such seditions. But she is unable to shake the desire that blossoms inside her like a climbing weed, trying to strangle all the other roses.

**OoOoOoOoO**

On July the third, 1973, she visits Diagon Alley and purchases her first wand.

She had been into London before but had stubbornly snubbed the Wizarding bazaar, instead electing to go shopping with Tuney and their mother, while Lily and their father ventured into the obnoxious unknown.

Lily's boundless enthusiasm is almost as intoxicating as the sights, the smells, and the sounds of the magical street, of the vendors peddling exotic and mysterious concoctions, of the owls swooping about like sparrows, of star-spangled robes and strange bursts of rainbow coloured smoke.

Daisy had made up her mind to dislike the place, had steeled herself to be as uninterested and resentful as possible, to compensate for her presence there. Instead she finds such intentions taking a back seat to intrigue; what are Nose Biting Teacups? Do they really mean _every _flavour?

Lily guides her by the hand, a whirl of red hair and eager smiles, and the eight year old Daisy, the Daisy who believed in fairies, and goblins, follows eagerly, her sister's infectious smile blooming across her lips.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Tuney does not see them off that year at the station, much to their mother's disgust. She is attending a lunch date with Evan Gladstone in Nottingham, and at fifteen, there is little her parents can do to stop her.

She leaves a note for Daisy.

Perhaps that is why she spends the entire journey refusing to speak to Lily, and glaring poisonously at all her friends. When Lily remarks upon her sour scowls and takes the time to explain them to her nauseatingly sympathetic friends, Daisy cannot wait until she learns a spell that will burn her sweet sister's lovely red locks to ashes.

**OoOoOoOoO**

There are no words fit to describe her feelings at the first sight of the castle.

There are three other girls in the boat with her, bobbing atop the lake, but she has not bothered to learn their names. When the castle appears to them though, there is a collective sort of sigh, and universal wonder in their eyes.

They will never forget this moment, Daisy realises, outside herself, and therefore they will not forget each other. It is strange to be so intimately bonded with such utter strangers, but Daisy can no longer find it in her to despise them.

Later, with Lily's green eyes glued to hers with an intensity that could melt ice, Daisy is made to stand up in front of the entire congregation, and a dirty old hat is placed upon her clean, golden-haired curls.

When the voice whispers inside her head, she almost screams. Of course, the thing could speak, she realised that, but it's not speaking to the five hundred strong body of pupils, it's speaking to _her. _

"_Stubborn," _it considers, and Daisy fights a mad urge to laugh, disguising a potential fit of giggles as a sneeze. It's a _hat_. The sort her mother would not even bother the Sally Army with. _"Loyal. Oh yes. Loyal."_

There are other things it whispers to her, things that make her shiver and wish for something warm and familiar. In the end it makes its decision, but not before it has exhausted other alternatives. Daisy does not hinder the internal monologue but considers the Hat, an extremely fickle creature, considering it sorted the last boy in under half a second.

"HUFFLEPUFF!" it bellows out and Daisy can see the disappointment flickering in Lily's eyes, even as her sister smiles and cheers. She has already failed some sort of hidden test. She puts down the hat and trots over to the table with yellow ties and badgers pinned on their robes.

It is sort of typical, she thinks, that Lily would be a Lioness and she would end up as a common badger.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Hogwarts, for all its bombastic flairs and magic, is nevertheless still a school, and there's a rhythm to school life that not even magic can disturb.

There are those girls who sit and giggle; those boys who show off; the one person who seems to know everything and take great delight in letting everyone else know it too. There is, of course, the one class everyone dreads, the one teacher who everyone, even the bravest of the brave, knows better than to mess with, the one poor educator with whom everyone messes, and a crotchety old janitor who spends his life cursing the student populous.

Before long, things that had captivated, bewildered, and frightened her become mundane and unspectacular. Daisy is naturally known as 'Lily Evans's sister,' a moniker that gains some friendly nods in the corridors from the third year Gryffindors and some vicious name calling from the third year Slytherin's.

She says _Hello_ to Severus once on the way to Transfiguration. He's surrounded by other boys, who look at her as though she has grown an extra head. As do the girls she is walking to class with, Charity mutters in her ear after, and cannot understand how she, _Daisy Evans, _knows and associates with _Severus Snape. _

Severus ignores her entirely. Daisy does not tell Lily but she does write a particularly vicious letter home to Tuney, filled with several unpleasant and descriptive analogies for Severus Snape and his hair.

Perhaps if she can convince Tuney she is still on her side, her big sister will write back.

**OoOoOoOoO**

Tuney does write. Her letters are not as frequent as their mother's and painstakingly addressed to only Daisy, something which pleases her, and then makes her feel like a horrible human being when Lily notices the single name sprawled across the envelope.

Tuney's letters speak of boys, of school scandals and what Granny Flo said to their mother last Sunday. Daisy replies in half-lies, carefully feeding her sister titbits of gossip while adamantly deploring the world around her.

Any elements of her new world that repel her are immediately exaggerated, the teachers she dislikes become a caricature of eighteenth century tutors with beaky noses and whips. She hopes that these remonstrations please Petunia, assure her that Daisy is merely tolerating her new surroundings, not indulging in them the way Lily does.

**OoOoOoOoO**

It's after the Christmas interlude that Daisy has the illustrious pleasure of meeting James Potter and his cronies for the first time.

Of course, it's hardly the first time she's seen them; some mornings it's hard to ignore the pandemonium taking place at the Gryffindor table and Daisy has joined her sister in the Gryffindor stands during the Gryffindor-Slytherin matches.

His name is one Lily has mentioned several times, accompanied by the sort of curdling glare normally reserved for Petunia.

Her sister loathes him, despite him easily being the most popular boy in her year and warns Daisy not to give his antics any of her attention. '_His fat head doesn't need any more swelling.'_

Daisy is alone and on her way to the dungeons for Potions when one of his friends nearly sends her flying down the cold stone steps descending into caverns under Hogwarts. As it is, she trips two steps and lands on her rear, books soaring, her schoolbag rolling down another couple of steps.

"Oi! Padfoot!" calls a voice, and a hand is proffered to her. "You near killed a firstie!"

Daisy is helped to her feet, her books are collected and a boy – Roland? Roman? – the quiet one, hands her, her schoolbag and murmurs an apology that sounds far more sincere than the one Sirius Black decides to give her.

"You're Lily's sister, aren't you?" asks James, a grin spreading across his face.

Daisy can't really see what's so special about him. Certainly he is a head shorter that Lily and his voice squeaks the same way Alfie Adams's had. He's not as handsome as his ill-mannered friend, but there is something about the way he holds himself. And he has nice eyes, even if they are hidden behind ugly spectacles.

"You're Potter," says Daisy, drawing herself up and spewing as much contempt into his name as possible.

His grin widens and he runs a hand through his mop of black hair, making it look even more like a birds nest. "Evans mentioned me, has she?"

Sirius whistles from a couple of steps above them, a plump boy at his side. "You're getting in there mate, if you ask me."

"Bugger off," she snaps, cheeks flushing madly at her daring.

She turns and walks away as dismissively as possible, imagining she's long-legged Petunia who could quell ignorant boys with a look.

Cat-calls follow her, she imagines she may have made a mistake, a first year swearing at the notoriously popular gang of third year boys.

Lily seems to find her response appropriate though and vows to seek vengeance on her behalf, should Sirius Black or Potter ever dare to annoy her.

Daisy smiles fondly and allows Lily to continue braiding her hair.

**OoOoOoOoO**

First year ends with shouts and goodbyes at the train station. Charity Burbage and Katrina Cresswell promise to write to her, and Lily has to be dragged away from Mary McDonald and Marlene McKinnon.

Their parents are waiting for them anxiously on the other side of the barrier and both of them are drowned in hugs and kisses. More importantly, Tuney is there waiting for them, and embraces Daisy as though no transgressions have been made.

Later that night, tucked up on the couch watching _Top of the Pops_, Tunney whispers in her ear, "Was it really that bad?"

Daisy thinks of Charity and Katrina, of Astronomy, of warm Professor Adler with her cups of hot coco at midnight while they watch the stars.

She does not hesitate though.

"You have no idea."

**OoOoOoOoO**

**Apologies for the lack of updates. On the bright side, I've decided to extend this fic from 3 chapters to nine. This will be a prequel of sorts to another story I've had on the back-burner for a while.**

**R&R**

**- Moonblue **


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